Throughout all of mankind’s history, we have told stories to one another; stories in various media and through various genres. It’s in the nature of man to want to enjoy a good story, but this isn’t something that automatically happens. This especially applies in speculative fiction (sci-fi and fantasy), in which events happen that couldn’t or likely wouldn’t ever happen in our world. Even so, we want to simply enjoy the story, to get swept up in it without worrying about its realism or lack of such. This is where a writing concept called “willing suspension of disbelief” comes in. So what is willing suspension of disbelief and how can it be used best in writing through various media?
Willing suspension of disbelief, put simplest, is a sort of contract between the audience and the writer of the creative work that says ‘You tell me a good story, and I’ll temporarily accept that what’s happening in this story is real.’ Unfortunately, this willing suspension of disbelief is often taken too far by some writers of speculative fiction. They think they don’t have to make their writing believable or internally consistent. Let’s use characters with superpowers, for instance. Super-strength is the most well-known one.
Just because a fictional character has superhuman strength doesn’t mean that that strength should be used just on a whim or just as the plot demands – especially if this character is supposed to be the hero. Writing for villains is a different matter. Superman’s not going to pick up a building and swing it at Darkseid just because he can – he’s going to have to take into account that there likely will be people inside that building who aren’t any part of the conflict and who would die from the building being ripped from its foundations. That would make collateral damage be astronomical, plus it would be quite out of character. Also, if he’s going to pick up a building, a good writer who’s aware of the need to remain internally consistent isn’t going to have him find it difficult to lift a car in the next scene – unless of course kryptonite is involved.
Let’s look at another example: martial arts abilities. Heroes in martial arts fight scenes are often shown to be superhumanly skilled – unfortunately, this is because their opponents often attack one at a time and patiently stand back to allow their partners to be sent to the ground with a well-placed blow. Real fights with multiple opponents don’t work that way – they’re all going to be attacking at once. Granted, it’s very difficult to choreograph fights with multiple attackers, but the least that could be done is to have the hero maneuver him/herself in such a way that only one or two attackers can be in the fight at once. Either that, or explain just why only one fighter at a time chooses to attack, such as a code of honor. On that note, it breaks through willing suspension of disbelief to see a drastic drop in skill based on how many opponents are fighting. In other words, one low-level enemy fighter is often a challenge to the hero, yet s/he is able to mow through tens or scores of them with ease with the hero at the same skill level. One way to deal with this is to portray the members of the group getting in one another’s way, which is what would actually happen.
These are just a few examples of how willing suspension of disbelief can be maintained in fiction. Although the last two examples may seem only to apply to TV shows or films, they can be applied to books just as easily, if not more so. The two main rules of keeping willing suspension of disbelief are to a) keep the story internally consistent with plot, characters and abilities and b) try to explain or justify things that do seem to fall outside logical plausibility.
